KOTA KINABALU: State-owned Sawit Kinabalu’s move to improve production efficiency can help increase the value of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) supplied by smallholders.
The pre-emptive step will focus on increasing oil extraction rate (OER) and reduce wastage at its mills, especially in the west coast of Sabah.
Dialogues and courses to be jointly organised by Sawit Kinabalu and Malaysian Palm Oil Board are also on the cards to help smallholders consistently produce quality FFB that will fetch better prices.
Sawit Kinabalu revealed that its processing mill in Lumadan near here, managed to push the OER from 19.91 per cent to 22.18 per cent within five months.
This has helped increase the price of FFB by an average of about RM50 a tonne.
Sawit Kinabalu Lumadan mill manager Nazlan Mohamad said ripe fresh fruit bunches can fetch good prices with all the initiatives put in place by the company.
He said, however, the tendency of smallholders or even the company’s own harvesters to deliver unripe or empty FFB need to be avoided as it will be returned.
Senior estate manager Victor Ationg said the company on its part, will penalise its harvesters who deliver FFB that do not adhere to the guidelines provided by the MPOB.
“To harvest unripe FFB would be a waste as it has less than 14 per cent oil content as opposed to the ripe ones which contains about 24 per cent to 25 per cent,” Victor said.
The same goes to FFB that were harvested late, he said, adding each oil palm tree with ripe FFB has a 10 day harvesting span.
“These guidelines are imposed to ensure high OER from each FFB and the positive figures obtained in June following the measures taken by the company spells hope for all stakeholders including the smallholders.”
